When the forest falls: A case study of National Strategic Projects, dispossession of living space, and community resistance in South Papua
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37905/drsj.v5i1.184Keywords:
Accumulation by Dispossession, Customary Land Rights, Documentary Film, National Strategic Project, South PapuaAbstract
Indonesia’s food and energy National Strategic Projects (Proyek Strategis Nasional, PSN) in South Papua target millions of hectares of forest, savanna, and wetland within landscapes containing extensive customary territories. This study examines how the scheme was designated and implemented in Merauke Regency and in its planned oil-palm extension to Boven Digoel and Mappi, how it has changed Indigenous kampung communities' access to land and forests, and how communities have resisted. Using a qualitative, document- and media-based single-case design, we analyzed 46 publicly available items (legal instruments, court records, satellite-monitoring and civil-society reports, official statements, investigative journalism, and the paratexts, reported content, circulation, and reception of the documentary film Pesta Babi) published up to June 30, 2026. The materials were coded using accumulation-by-dispossession and access theory. The scheme rests on a sequence of instruments, from Presidential Regulation 40/2023 to a 2025 forestry decree releasing 486,939 ha of state forest, followed in 2025 by its relabeling from a PSN project to a four-regency national strategic program. Satellite monitoring recorded 22,272 ha of natural ecosystems, including 9,835 ha of primary forest, cleared within the Merauke PSN area between January 2024 and June 2025. Documented access losses were associated with forest reclassification, machinery, and compensation payments in the context of a military presence, rather than with formal extinguishment of customary rights, and community positions were divided. Resistance to the scheme took the form of complaints to human rights bodies, customary prohibition markers, and the film, which circulated through more than 1,800 screenings but whose representation was itself contested. The article operationalizes living-space dispossession through access mechanisms and legal-administrative processes, documents administrative relabeling of the continuing program, and recommends that the deliberation-and-agreement procedure of Article 43(4) of the Papua Special Autonomy Law precede forest release and land acquisition.
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